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The Alton Towers Dungeon

Thameslink Rail said:
To be honest, how many people actually bother with the AT dungeons? For day visitors it takes 45 minutes out of an already limited time on park and MAP holders can go to the other dungeons for free which have almost identical scenes and are usually longer. It also looks like the other dungeons are struggling currently, The Blackpool Tower Dungeon is closing over winter and The London Dungeons frequently closes at 4pm on weekends in one of the biggest tourist hotspots in the world. I guess the AT Dungeons would have worked better if it was located closer to the car parks and could stay open after park close but I don't think there are any suitable places there. The other question is what they should do with the building, I would like to see a family-friendly boat ride included in park entry, I don't really care what it's themed to so long as it's done well. It would add to the park's list of all-weather attractions which is surprisingly short for Britain and it's unpredictable weather.
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I reckon we’re only a couple of years away from the dungeons going to be honest. Whenever I’ve looked at availability, every slot was always available so it must be costing the park far more than what it’s worth especially with it being such a staff heavy attraction.

Perhaps there is a future plan to incorporate the ride into a new area when Project Horizon materialises?
 
The Dungeons really should have been built as part of the resort complex instead of being on the park.

One idea that could have been done is that instead of getting Cbeebies hotel you could have it themed to something more mythical to ancient British legends (Loch Ness Monster, Beast of Bodmin etc) and such and the Dungeons could have been built underneath the hotel on the basement level in which you could have themed it in all well to the hotel all into that space without using any more land needed. Actually it would have been excellent for Scarefest if the park did more events again on the resort compex instead of just using the park.

Actually if you wanted to make the resort complex have more to do you could have thrown in a Tussauds waxworks museum somewhere on site to have Merlin flex off their products which would making going to the resort its own separate experience instead of just the park, a second gate if you will. Quite possible and not all that expensive to do the more you think about it and one that has potential.

So yeah, Dungeons could have worked at Towers except they built it in the wrong place.
 
s_g_k said:
I reckon we’re only a couple of years away from the dungeons going to be honest. Whenever I’ve looked at availability, every slot was always available so it must be costing the park far more than what it’s worth especially with it being such a staff heavy attraction.

Perhaps there is a future plan to incorporate the ride into a new area when Project Horizon materialises?
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I can't imagine why they'd keep going with it if it wasn't profitable.
 
I don't think Dungeons would have performed any better if it was situated over by the hotels. Perhaps as a part of a wider leisure complex, but not being placed next to the golf or elsewhere. It would have likely performed the same as it has now, popular in year one, plods along the years after.

I doubt it matters if it makes money or not. Operating and staffing costs will likely form a part of the budgets for ride operations and/or entertainments. It's more likely that it's still open now simply due to it being fairly cheap to operate, free money if guests do decide to experience it and it looks better than a massive building sitting SBNO for an eternity. I can see it staying until Alton Towers/Merlin has plans for the ride/building in place.
 
There are two ways to look at the economics of something like the Dungeons. Revenue = x, costs = y ... If x < y = bad ... but if you take that approach, consider all the rides on park that have zero revenue.
 
Rick said:
There are two ways to look at the economics of something like the Dungeons. Revenue = x, costs = y ... If x < y = bad ... but if you take that approach, consider all the rides on park that have zero revenue.
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I'd argue that it is easier to use that approach with the Dungeons than it is with a regular ride at the park, and it would be a pretty reliable way to determine the attraction's economic success.

With a regular ride, it's hard to gauge how much "revenue" it generates seeing as the park has a flat entry fee, but as the Dungeons is an upcharge attraction, then I'd argue that the ratio of revenue to costs (i.e. profit) can be quite easily used as a metric to determine its success from an economic standpoint. Everyone pays a clear rate on top of their entry fee to experience the Dungeons, so you have a clear-cut idea of how much revenue the attraction generates.
 
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@Matt N it is easier to understand the revenue, no doubt about it.

What is less clear is the motivation, is the Dungeon responsible for producing its own income (i.e. is the expectation that its revenue exceeds its costs?).

With one paying guest per day, its revenue exceeds that of most other attractions and with zero guests per day it probably costs 10% of what it costs to run Skyride, which never has any revenue.
 
Trooper Looper said:
Highly likely unfortunately :(

I find it funny that on this thread people talk about the former attractions more than the Actual Dungeons ride. Really says a lot from how bad it is if you think of it.
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The thing is, its not actually bad. It’s just badly placed, wrongly up charged and uninspired for a park that’s only open 10-4. It doesn’t fit, and was the wrong investment in every, way, shape and form. But it is actually a good experience. One I’ve only done twice and will never do again because of lots of factors. But it is quite decent when you do it.
 
Danscott22 said:
The thing is, its not actually bad. It’s just badly placed, wrongly up charged and uninspired for a park that’s only open 10-4. It doesn’t fit, and was the wrong investment in every, way, shape and form. But it is actually a good experience. One I’ve only done twice and will never do again because of lots of factors. But it is quite decent when you do it.
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Well I hears that the actors are brilliant and interact with the guests well, but the thing that ruins it supposedly is the Boat Ride section, from being too dark, little to no sets, terrible quality of sets, etc.
 
Trooper Looper said:
Well I hears that the actors are brilliant and interact with the guests well, but the thing that ruins it supposedly is the Boat Ride section, from being too dark, little to no sets, terrible quality of sets, etc.
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The actors are superb, it takes a certain talent to think on the spot, respond to your audience, be funny and keep to the script and timings. There is an older chap who often is the judge and he was one of the roaming actors in Oktoberfest (the character with the stein and bubbles). Talking of using actors around the park, I think the Oktoberfest compare was also an actor in Darkest Depths this year. And was he the drag queen on the intro video for Rita at the fireworks? The voice sounded similar to his.

The boat ride could be better, definitely, but it also does work as it is due to the dark and not knowing what is going to happen next - the anticipation and fear of something about to happen (whether it does or not) is what makes it tense for many. Bit like horror movies - often the scariest ones are the ones that show very little onscreen and leave the rest up to the imagination of the viewer.
 
I would estimate its running costs at over £100 an hour. What would that be, 12 people an hour to break even?

It has an admission fee, so I'm not sure comparisons to things that don't are entirely sound. The Dungeon is a somewhat direct assessment in that it will cost X an hour to operate and will require a certain throughput to offset that. You could however consider that it "losing money" is worth it if it is contributing towards park capacity management or the "rides per day" metric, but I am certain that the Dungeon will barely be helping in that regard, unless anyone has usage numbers?

The calculation with something like Nemesis is that it costs X an hour/pro rata to operate, but how many people would stop visiting the park or decrease spend if the ride were closed.
 
Danscott22 said:
The thing is, its not actually bad. It’s just badly placed, wrongly up charged and uninspired for a park that’s only open 10-4. It doesn’t fit, and was the wrong investment in every, way, shape and form. But it is actually a good experience. One I’ve only done twice and will never do again because of lots of factors. But it is quite decent when you do it.
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I fully echo these thoughts. I've only experienced the Dungeons once so far and to be honest, I will probably give it another go in the future. The actors truly are brilliant. The level of guest interaction is great - although I ended up being the one that got picked on in all but 1 or 2 of the scenes 😂

The special effects are also really cool, for example in the bar scene and the haunting of molly crowe. We're in a world now where the creatives behind theme park attractions tend to lean and rely too heavily on non-physical props such as screens to do what physical props used to at a fraction of the cost. I've never done a Dungeons attraction before other than the Towers Dungeons, so the use of the back-prodders in the bar scene for example were an unexpected (but actually welcome!) addition.

But as Dan said, the boat ride portion is super lacklustre. I'm not sure why this is - because I remember from Charlie And The Chocolate Factory that there were large, diverse sets in there. So it's not as if there's not areas where theming could go where it doesn't currently. I think I could recall maybe 3 things that happened on the boat ride, and the rest was just sitting in pitch darkness with the occasional water drip on the top of your head.

Surely something that they could do on the boat ride would possibly have different scenes in it, depicting each of the different scenes that you actually experience during the attraction? Sort of like a 'coming up...' teaser, without actually revealing too much which could potentially ruin the experience. For example, the Molly Crowe scene could literally be nothing short of a dimly lit table in the middle of the room - open window at the back with a thunderstorm playing, wind machine blasting cold air towards you, whilst a lamp falls over or a ouija board planchette moving on its own. It doesn't need to actually tell a story, just be there for a teaser for what's to come.

Honestly, they could do anything to the boat ride to make it better. I'm sure my idea that I literally just plucked from my head as i'm sat writing this isn't the best course of action and that MMM could do a much better job than little old me, but it's just so much wasted opportunity. In fact, i'd love to go through the boat ride section outside of show mode with the house lights on just to see how much empty space there is. I guarantee you there's entire scenes that are completely bare and have just been painted totally black.
 
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